The weight of time in motherhood.

Yesterday was my dad’s birthday. I love him so much. 

He lives in Florida now, and my sweet family is where the rest of us are, hunkered down in the Maine snow. 

On our phone call to daycare, my boys, almost two and three and a half, loudly say “Happy Birthday, Pa Pou!” (My dad’s Greek roots beckoned his grandparent name long before my children were born.)

I drop the boys off, and pick them up, eight hours later. Eight hours later of creative work, invoices, productivity, tending to sick chickens, coaching calls, workshopping new offers, connecting. It’s a full day; it’s a good day. 

But this morning, as I held my littlest guy’s hand behind my back as I drove down the familiar back roads to daycare, listening to “amour” by Jean-Michel Blais, I thought about the future, while holding, so bitter-sweetly, the present. 

In just three and half years, my big little guy has hair on his legs, and rougher, not-so-baby-soft hands. He looks more like a child and less like a baby, though his little cheeks still beg for the squishiest of kisses. He is so smart and so often, yes daily, I feel I do not do enough for him. He needs challenging, puzzles, fixing things, art, and I wonder if the little I am able to do on my tailends of a work day are enough.

I remember how quickly my time at home with him fled, when I was a fulltime stay-at-home mom. And now, with them going to near fulltime daycare, the same amount of time will flee all too quickly with my littlest guy. As his teeth continue to come in and new words continue to come out of his precious, smiley mouth, I stare, hoping to commit these faces and the matching voices to memory.

Surprisingly, I’m not crying, and I wasn’t this morning as I thought about these things on the way to daycare. Perhaps processing time. 

Time. Such a stark word. There’s no movement to it. It stares us bold in the face and refuses to move; its powerful hand steady, unmoving, unrelenting, and promising to tick by at the same set pace, on and on until our dying breath. 

As I get older, I think about the decisions we make, micro ones, and their daily impact and repercussions. How I discipline my kids, how I disciple my kids, how I show up for them individually, how I create a safe and flourishing home. And of course, the opposite of all of those and doing them detrimentally. There is no second chance. Every moment will have a follow-up and a follow-through. No do-overs. Just grace and movement and a clock that keeps on ticking. 

I didn’t know I could love so much. I didn’t know that having my children would show me just how ugly, selfish, stingy, and proud I can be. I didn’t know that having and raising these children would show me the love of God for me in ways that color my world with undeserved grace and mercy and kindness. I am so grateful for these precious little gifts– souls to steward. 

Oh, the weight of it all. 

And time will keep ticking, and school will start and then one New Year’s Eve soon enough, the house will be silent, perhaps with just my husband and I clanging our forkfuls of Chicken Pad Thai on our plates. And time will keep on ticking.

But for now, I know that seven hours from this sentence, I will go pick up my boys, and they will run to me the same way they always do, yelling emphatically, “Mummy!!!” and I will hug them and they will fight me to put their coats on. We will go grocery shopping, and maybe on the way home, we’ll call my dad, who’s in Florida, and I’ll enjoy and try to commit to memory their little voices shouting “Hi Pa Pou!!” once again.